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Calendar for the 2009-2010 Season

The Calendar and Journal of our Meetings

Each year, we try to bring a varied, not to say eclectic, range of subjects to the fore, with the aim of providing an interesting experience to all our members and guests. Hopefully, we succeed.

Very occasionally, for reasons beyond our control, it may be necessary to re-arrange or cancel a meeting. The Meeting Status indicator will be updated to amber if the meeting is under review, or red if the meeting has been cancelled. Full details will appear here

Calendar for the 2009-2010 Season

To make things clearer, we've colour coded the type of meeting:

[    ] Blue is for regular Members' Evenings,

[    ] Green is for Evenings where a visiting speaker will make a

       presentation, and

[    ] Red is for the AGM. Be there, or be on the Committee next year!

1st September 2009  The Season opens with the first of our Guest Speakers for the year. Mr Cyril Defriez, from Lytham St Anne's, will blow the whistle on 'Railway Postmarks of Great Britain.'

6th October 2009  This evening is the first of our Members' Evenings for the year. The theme is entirely open, but there must be some connection with the letters 'K' and 'O' It is worth noting that in previous years there has been considerable ingenuity shown in developing these connections!

3rd November 2009  Our second Guest Speaker for the year is Mr Paul Gaywood from Preston, who will be visiting a favourite stamping ground with his presentation 'Great Britain: The History of the Posts from 1700.'

1st December 2009  We will be amazed and impressed, not just once, but twice, tonight as two of our members give half-evening presentations. Mr Ian Koller will swoop down with 'Birds of a Feather' while Mr Les Johnson will be mentioned in despatches for his review of 'The Victoria Cross.' PS It is always possible that there might be the odd mince pie served this evening.

5th January 2010  Our January meeting ought to be rather colourful, concentrating as it does on the blue 'Danube from the Black Forest to the Black Sea.' We welcome Mr Robert Flamman as our Speaker.

2nd February 2010  What better way to lighten a dark evening as we set off for distant parts and exotic climes as our members give displays of anything and everything philatelic from 'South of the Equator.'

2nd March 2010  This evening sees the competition for the Norman Barlow Cup, featuring displays of material from Great Britain, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, but excluding 'local' issues from some of the less-inhabited islands!

6th April 2010  The 'Philatelist King' ascended the throne in May 1910. To commemorate the centenary our members' displays this evening will focus on anything to do with King George V.

4th May 2010  The Annual General Meeting. Not just the AGM, but also the Club Auction.

1st June 2010  The final meeting of the Season is our Postcard Evening. This year's theme is quite straightforward: '140 years of Postcards' when our members can show their favourite postcards, old and new.

Journal for the 2009-2010 Season

A Narrative Account of our Season

1st September 2009

The long, lazy days of summer are passing, the first touches of autumn are in the air, the first meeting of Southport Stamp and Postcard Club new season is arriving on schedule, with all the smooth well-oiled precision of an express train. Which is appropriate, in an odd kind of way, as the topic for our opening session was 'Railway Station Postmarks of Great Britain.' Station Master on this occasion was Mr Cyril DeFriez, visiting from Lytham St Anne's who took us back in history to 1844, and the establishment of the first Railway Station Office in Gloucester, dealing no doubt with the chaos and confusion caused by the need to transfer all the mails from one train to another where the standard gauge of the Midland Railway met the broad gauge of Brunel's finest, the Great Western. Our first class journey then took us through single and double circles, duplexes and squared circles, up to the squashy rubberised cancellers of modern times. We learned about the rare usage of Krag machine cancellers, and admired the ingenuity of the troops in the Supplies department who had to find some way of taking half the letters out of a Railway Sorting Office name in order to fit what was left into the canceller, without losing sense, or putting the apostrophes in the wr'ng place! Oh well, happy days. The Club expressed its thanks to Mr DeFriez with a hearty round of applause.

6th October 2009

Each year we have one evening dedicated to Members’ displays themed around two letters of the alphabet. Each year, one letter advances up the alphabet while the other moves down, and this year the favoured two were ‘O’ and ‘K’

We learned about Ospreys and Kestrels from the world of Ornithology; we learned about Friedrich August Kekule von Stradowitz who worked out the formulation of benzine, which powered the four stroke engine developed by Nikolas August Otto. The Orange Free State and the Orange River Colony was a stop on the way East to Kedah, Kelantan and Kuala Lumpur. In a more spiritual vein, we looked at fascinating history of the Passion Play from Oberammergau, and a series of postcards from Oxford.

All told, a really OK evening!

3rd November 2009

The History of the Posts from 1700 is a broad subject indeed, admirably covered by Mr Gaywood, starting from the very first post marks introduced when the Royal Mail was opened to the general public by King Charles II - purely as a fund-raising expedient! Early postmarks featured day and month of posting, but frustratingly, not the year. We tend to think of modern postal charges as being expensive, but a 4-ounce letter sent from London to Edinburgh was more expensive in 1800 than it is today - that is in actual money, not adjusted for inflation! But it was the Victorian period, with its postage stamps, post cards, parcel post, registered letters and telegraphs, which saw the development of what we would regard as modern communications. Especially modern was the idea of establishing post offices only where they would be profit making, or would be subsidised by the local community - and that in the first half of the 19th century!

All-in-all, a veritable tour d’horizon, and there can’t have been any in the audience who did not learn something new.

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1st December 2009

Our evening’s entertainment was to have included a presentation on the Victoria Cross by Past Secretary Les Johnson, but in his absence Mr Koller gave us twice as much information on ‘Birds of a Feather.’ Probably the most popular ‘exotic’ bird is the penguin, which always attracts attention; what is perhaps less well known is that there are some seventeen different species which live in the Antarctic and far south of the globe. Mr Koller displayed stamps from many countries, featuring this appealing birds. We were in rather more awe of the second part of the presentation: Birds of Prey. Falcons and Eagles are not widely known in our part of the world, but hawks, merlins, kestrels and owls certainly are.  These have all featured philatelically!

5th January 2010

For the first time in a very long time it was necessary to cancel the Club Meeting. The cause was evident to everyone who looked out of their window, or tried to cross the street. A day during which a considerable amount of snow fell resulted in serious compaction, and the formation of surfaces rather like the Cresta Run. So, rather than take too many chances, we pulled the plug.

Our visiting speaker for the evening was to have been Mr Robert Flamman, and we hope to be able to enjoy his presentation in a forthcoming programme.